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Monday, October 21, 2013

106 Recipe Ideas Using Ground Beef

When 110 pounds of ground beef arrives in your freezer, you experience a variety of emotions. When it appears just days after you'd donated 55 pounds of ground beef to the Foodbank to make room for the new beef . . . well, let's just say that the need for new ground beef recipe ideas becomes imperative.

Why do I have so much ground beef in my freezer? Simply put, I like to know about where my food is coming from, and in addition to eating from our CSA farm share, I like to get meat and eggs locally as well. If you'd like to purchase beef local to where you live, check out the upper left corner for the Local Harvest options in your area. If you live in the Seattle, WA area check out Farmstr where you can connect directly with food producers. I've got a NOTE below, more about the beef in my freezer, but I don't wish to offend anyone's tender sensibilities so I first I will share the following wonderful recipe ideas shared by a variety of food bloggers who answered my plea for ground beef recipes.

NOTE: The steer in my freezer that will feed my family for the next year had a name. It is not my intention to offend any tender sensibilities by sharing more about him. It is my intention to know more about the food I feed my family. If you don't want to learn more about the steer, please skip over the next paragraph. I indented and italicized it too, to make it easier if you wish to avoid. Join us after the photo for some final thoughts.

The steer below was born on a dairy farm in western Ohio. There's not much use for boy calves on dairy farms--yes, technically he was a bull calf--so he was given to my neighbor's friend's wife because she used to work on the dairy farm. My neighbor's friend and his family allow their steers (that's a neutered male, BTW) to free range on 13 acres of grass and shelter under the barn. The kids named this steer Butch, and regularly fed him and his buddies dandelions. My neighbor's friend built an earthen ramp to minimize the stress of loading the animals into his trailer for the short trip to the butcher shop. The butcher shop is known for not stressing the animals and only processes 2 animals a day. Butch was dry aged for a couple of weeks before cutting and packaging. We got a quarter of Butch (don't ask which quarter, as I've got both his tongue and his tail). As I don't cook large amounts of meat at one time, I prefer getting smaller one pound packages of ground beef in lieu of roasts. Why did I have so much ground beef left over from the previous animal? Apparently I'm pretty good at stretching meat.

I've thoroughly enjoyed working on this recipe round up. So much so that I'm planning another one for what to do with the Band Fruit Fundraiser citrus that will fill up my crisper in a few months! Any ideas for future recipe round ups, (25 uses for kohlrabi? 17 ways to love beets?) please leave 'em in the comments. Thanks!

Mary,I got the scoop from Janelle. If you sign up for the mailing list on the Farmstr website you'll get emails about current offers. Farmstr is adding drops on the eastside in the coming weeks, and in fact closing tomorrow there's one for ground beef delivering to North Bend. Please see http://www.farmstr.com for more details. Thanks!

Mary,I've got a message in to Janelle, the woman behind Farmstr, and I'll get back to you. Shows how much I know about Seattle--but I can see by Google that it's nearby.I hope you can connect with local food via Farmstr!

Great post and terrific round up. I love that you make sure your proteins are ethically sourced. We've been doing that too for the past couple years and even though it's more work to track down the ingredients and usually more money spent on them, it's so worth it. Thanks for the post!

Julie,I'm not sourcing *all* of my proteins yet--I can't pass up a deal on ground pork or chicken at the store--though I do have my Thanksgiving turkey reserved from a friend of our CSA farmers. Baby steps. Thanks!

Holy crap this was an incredible amount of work. I bet it feels good to be done with this one, and I'm thrilled you linked up. Just about made my day. I also love how all of your personal recipes incorporate veggies in some way, shape or form. You are the indeed the Queen of stretching meat, although with 110 lbs of Butch in your freezer, you might not need to stretch it anymore. :) P.S. I liked reading that Butch ate dandelions and the butcher only processes two animals a day.

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